NationStates Jolt Archive

The Beddgelen Democratic Republic
The Future Belongs to Socialism!

http://www.nationstates.net/images/flags/uploads/beth_gellert.jpg

"Oh, where does faithful Gelert roam? The flower of all his race! So true, so brave -- a lamb at home, A lion in the chase!"
-W. R. Spencer

Government

Names: Beddgelen Democratic Republic (official), Beddgelert (official short-form), BDR (abbreviation), Beth Gellert (common Anglicisation), BG (common abbreviation) Geletian Empire (popular), Principality of Geletia (former), Geletian Tetrachy (former)

Capital: Akink

Independence: 30th December, 1947, as Geletian Principality, from Tsarist Russian Protective Administration; 20th May, 1982, Beddgelen Democratic Republic declared; 15th February, 1989, Second Republic declared

Chief of State: General Secretary of the Central Committee of the League of Beddgelen Communists comrade Graeme Igo

Head of Government: Chairman of Council of State of the Beddgelen Democratic Republic comrade Chivo

Political Parties: League of Beddgelen Communists (splinter from defunct Geletian Communist Party), Democratic Farmers' Party of Beddgelert, Confederation of Free Geletian Trade Unions, Young Igovians including Free Pioneers Organisation, Women's Democratic Federation of Beddgelert, League of Culture of the Beddgelen Democratic Republic

Overview: Officially, the BDR is governed today according to what is called The Chivo Doctrine, a set of principles drawn-up by comrade Chivo in accordance with the teachings of comrade Graeme Igo. Its tenets are as follows:

1) Establishment of the community as society's base unit
2) Locally, direct democracy
3) Nationally, democratically accountable representation
4) State ownership of capital
5) Worker self-management
6) A fixed value-tax on capital goods
7) Perfect-competition in Socialist free-trade
8) Market-simulation through state control of prices

This system of government is officially called Chivo-Igovian Communism.

Though officially the work of Chairman Chivo, the eight tenets of the so-called Chivo Doctrine are said by some to be the brainchild of Secretary Igo, who many -labeled as dissidents- believe to be the ideological genius but poor relation in the nominally equally strong dual premiership. Igo's ideas, say the dissenters, are more properly reflected when the Indian Soviet system is allowed to function as designed, while in the BDR the real Chivo Doctrine is the unwritten code by which the Chairman and his allies maintain power.

Reforms said to be truly Chivo's have included measures such as Consumer Socialism, presented by the Council of State as fine-tuning of sluggish traditional Chivo-Igovian economics, though many continue to hold that it has been Chivo's own restrictive meddling that has prevented the full success of Igovian economics in the first place, and often point to more rapid growth in the ISC's economy. This, of course, may on the other hand be due to the smaller size of that economy and the measures being undertaken to industrialise it for the first time.

Geography

Location: Central and Southeastern Europe, bordering the Black Sea

Area: 441,440 sq km

Climate: Temperate

Terrain: Various plains punctuated by several mountain ranges including Transylvanian Alps, Carpathian Mountains and many mountains towards the south

Elevation extremes: Black Sea (0 metres), Mynydd Igo (2,925 metres)

Natural resources: Petroleum, natural gas, coal, iron ore, copper, bauxite, lead, zinc, salt, timber, hydropower, fertile soils

Natural hazards: Earthquakes, landslides

Notes: Strategic location near Turkish Straits; controls major land routes between Europe and Middle East/Asia

People

Population: 39,440,452 (July 2008 estimate)

Nationality: Beddgelen(s)

Ethnic groups: Geletian Celt (91% or higher), Magyar, Roma, Bulgar, Macedonian, Armenian, Tatar, Circassian, Tamil, Sinhalese, Turk, Ukrainian, German, Russian

Languages: Geletian (official), Romany, Magyar, Turkish, English, Romanian

Religion: Atheist (official), Druidic practices common and accepted, other faiths including Eastern Orthodox, Greek Catholic, Protestant, and Muslim very rare, Roman Catholic especially stigmatised

Literacy: 99.9% official (over 15 can read and write Geletian)

HIV/AIDS rate: Close to nil

Economy

GDP (PPP): US$788 billion

GDP (PPP) per capita: $20,000

GDP real growth rate: 1.2%

Labour force: 16.13 million (2007 estimate)

Agricultural products: wheat, corn, sunflower seeds, potatoes, sugar beets, barley, fruits, tobacco, grapes, wine; pigs, cattle, sheep, poultry, eggs, dairy products

Industries: machinery and equipment, coke, petroleum refining, nuclear fuel, mining, metallurgy, construction materials, processed foods, textiles, chemicals (especially pharmaceuticals), motor vehicles, timber, military equipment, shipbuilding, aircraft; electricity, gas, water; food, beverages, tobacco

Industrial production growth rate: 6%

Oil proved reserves: 1.073 billion barrels

Natural gas proved reserves: 135 billion cubic metres

Principle exports: fuels, metals, military equipment, transport equipment, cameras, pharmaceuticals, textiles, jewelry

Principle imports: iron ore, crude oil, chemicals, tea, spices

Major trade partners: Tamil Eelam

History

The Ancient Geletians

The oldest modern-human remains ever found in Europe were discovered in Beddgelert just a few years ago, dating back more than 35,000 years.

Celts came to what is now the northwestern region of the BDR, which lies in Central rather than Eastern Europe with the rest of the nation, around 450BC. In the south and east of Beddgelert, the Dacian people were dominant for some time, until being dislodged or overwhelmed by the ancestral Geletians, who came as part of the great invasions of Macedon, Greece, and Thrace, starting with the second Brennus in 281BC.

While the Tectosages, the Trocmii, and the Tolistobogii went on to become the Galatians of Anatolia, many other tribes remained in the eastern Balkans and, in time, grew in their association with tribes that had remained further north and west. The pressures of Roman expansion forced greater alliance between these people, and the Geletian Tetrachy was established between the first and third centuries BC.

Romanticised as a handsome race comprising the tallest people in Europe and the most fierce warriors in the known world, the ancient Geletians repulsed repeated Roman advances, and crushed the forces of the Emperor Domitian. Conflict continued for decades, Rome sometimes achieving temporary victories such as under the Emperor Trajan, while the Geletians in turn launched several invasions of Roman territory and won a number of famous victories.

Every time the Romans won ground, however, fierce Geletian revolts drew support from across the Tetrachy, and Rome was never able to fully subdue the tempremental Geletian peoples. In the end, the Tetrachy long outlived the Roman Empire.

Dark and Middle Ages

Despite surviving Roman interest, the Geletians would find that this earlier attention to their region was not perculiar to the Empire. Huns, Avars, Cumans, Magyar, Slavs, and Tartars all clashed with the Geletian Celts over the coming centuries, and the Tetrachy's borders shifted greatly.

Despite being on the one hand an effective buffer to migrant invasions of Europe, the Geletians themselves never completely left behind their barbarian reputation, and launched numerous raids on surrounding civilisations, often extracting tribute from others.

New and greater threats soon arose in the southeast. However, at Vaslui, the Geletians scored a decisive victory over the advancing Ottoman Empire. The Geletians never adopted Christianity themselves, viewing it as the imperial faith of their ancient enemies, but in fighting the Arabs and then the Turks, the Tetrachy inadvertantly rescued Europe several times from likely Muslim domination.

Early-Modern Era

The Geletian Tetrachy in the C16th and beyond found itself upon a vital crossroads. Trade between Europe and Asia made it wealthy and advanced its learning, but subjected the Druidic Celts to strong and repeated assaults from Christian Europe in the northwest and the Muslim Turks in the south.

Equally, the Geletians continued to raid Christian Europe, attacking into Austria and the western Balkans, and even attempting forays against the Italian peninsula, apparently still considering Rome a fundamental enemy. And, likewise, attacks on Thrace and Asia Minor continued, usually in the cause of a return to Galatia.

Though borders shifted back and forth, ultimately reducing the Tetrachy more than expanding it, the Geletians proved themselves immovable past a certain point. The nature of the Tetrachy enabled unity of purpose and relative internal stability often envied by Geletia's Christian neighbours, and military technology kept pace -often set the pace- until gunpowder weapons became widespread in Ottoman armies.

After shock defeats to Turkic armies that recalled their ancestors' stunning by enemy war elephants in the east, the Geletians proved remarkably level-headed in strategy, and soon realised that their hornbows could be used to out-range and overwhelm early firearms before the business of more favoured hand-to-hand combat was engaged, almost unfailingly to the benefit of the towering and ferocious Celts.

Later, as foreign firepower increased, the Geletian warrior reputation was only enhanced. The Geletian Highland Charge several times broke the ranks of Christian and Muslim musketeers and hand cannoneers, and Geletian horse-mobile infantry continued to see more disciplined armies put to the sword in the mountains of the Tetrachy.

The authority of the Tetrachy remained strong, and Celtic culture flourished, only enhanced by Geletia's position as a crossroad between east and west. The productivity of Geletian farmland, even before the agricultural revolutions that swept much of Europe, was not matched anywhere else until after the Great War and the introduction of intensive mechanisation, and Geletian metalworkers remained famous across the continents for their artistry.

The Great War

Come the Great War, the Geletians were still unwilling to accept that what many today romantically recall as a more honourable age of warfare was dead. Early defeats in open warfare might have awoken the Celts to the realities of industrialisation and mechanisation, but when Geletian resistance managed, amidst horrific losses, to delay advancing enemy forces in the nation's mountains and valleys, those opponents did the Tetrachy a great favour by settling into the trench warfare that was already familiar on other fronts. Here the Geletians were content to wait-out bombardments and keenly invite bayonet charges, time and again offering minimal counter-fire with scant few firearms only to obliterate enemy forces in close-quarter combat.

Commonly, the whistles sounding to order hostile forces over the top would be immediately joined by the haunting clarion call of the carnyx, the Celtic warhorn, which one foreign officer fighting the Tetrachy in the Balkans was moved to describe as, "a ghastly refrain that I can only imagine to be resulting from the barbarians' cooks preparation of some dish of the kraken's calamari!". Often as not, Geletian troops would prefer to leap from their own trenches during the enemy advance across no-man's land and rush them in the open, trusting that the enemy's machineguns would be hampered by the presence before them of their own infantry.

[WIP pending information on what the heck everyone else did in the Great War!]

The Second World War

By the 1930s, the Tetrachy was begining to look shaky. The Great War had trampled the flowers of Geletia's youth -the nation's losses were unmatched in relative terms-, and it was, perhaps, only the concurrent decline of other neighbouring powers that saved the Tetrachy from being picked apart.

The rise in Germany of the Nazi ideology appealed to many young Geletians looking to restore their nation's prestiege, and the idea that the Tetrachy's many minorities -Turks, Slavs, Jews, Roma, and others- could be responsible for the widening of the gap between Geletia and the rich nations of the west was taken to heart by no small part of the population.

The leadership of the Tetrachy, weakened by the nation's decline, then allowed itself to be manipulated into a pact with the Axis after the once-mighty Tolistobogii ceded territory to the Russian Empire at the behest of Tsar Yakov. The tribe lost preeminence in Central Geletia over coming years as a result of showing such weakness.

With the aim of retaking lands lost to the Russian Empire and absorbed into Ukraine and the new territory of Moldova, the Geletian Tetrachy entered the conflict in June of 1941, declaring war on Russia.

Despite early successes, the Tetrachy's military was insufficiently equipped to fight Hitler's war in Russia, but none the less allowed itself to be dragged all the way to the infamous quagmire of Tsaritsyn before suffering some of the worst defeats in Geletian military history.

In August of 1944, a Russian-backed coup lead by Llewellyn Map Gelert ended Geletia's membership of the Axis and brought down the ancient Tetrachy. Llewellyn was to head a Government of National Protection under Tsarist supervision as Geletian forces turned on the Nazis and fought to drive them from their lands. The Tolistobogii were widely blamed for the disorder, defeats, and decline, partly because they had ceded territory in the first place and then pushed for Axis membership in an ill-advised attempt to correct the perceived error, and partly because they were traditionally one of the most powerful tribes and an obvious target for blame when things went wrong.

The Principality

From August 1944 to December 1947, Geletia was a nation without a state. Under the Russian-sponsored Government of National Protection, the Tetrachy was clearly dead but no new constitution was enacted and no replacement state declared.

On the 30th of December, however, that all changed with the formation of the Geletian Principality, with Tsarist bosom-buddy Map* Gelert crowned Prince Llewellyn.

Llewellyn's rule was generally harsh, as the Prince was forced to battle centuries of free-spirited tradition and popular consultation in order to maintain his own position and to enforce Geletia's allegiance to the Tsarist bloc. Especially unpopular was the Prince's establishment of a Geletian Orthodox Church, which became a symbol of the nation's defeat after two thousand years of resisting Rome and, for some time, the Caliphate, which were identified as 'temple dictatorships'.

The Principality endured under Llewellyn's administration, through the terms of countless Prime Ministers and other official deputies, until the early 1980s, and while it knocked-out the longest-lived democratic society on earth and greatly worsened the human-rights situation in Geletia while also doing great disservices to the Celtic culture, it did see the beginnings of industrialisation in the economically backward region.

Throughout most of the thirty-five years of Llewellyn's Principality, however, one tribe remained outside of the nation's recognised borders. At least, for the most part.

Orinoccorix Magigo's Cornovii, based at the southern extreme of the Balkan peninsula, never accepted the Tetrachy's alliance with the Axis, nor the later switch to the Tsarist side, and certainly never accepted the authority of the Government of National Protection and the Principality that followed. Patriarch of the Clan Igo, Orinoccorix** was elected by the other Clan leaders as king of the Cornovii tribe, which had settled in Greece but held little respect for the borders of that nation or the Principality, and made itself a most royal nuisance throughout Llewellyn's reign.

Orinoccorix was cousin to Graeme Igo, and when Roman spies within the Greek Catholic Church identified the newly-elected Chieftain as a revolutionary Communist and Rome linked his rise to power with troubling Communist agitation in Greece, Llewellyn was only too happy to support the Roman invasion of that country, which occurred in 1980, when civil unrest in Geletia was reaching a high, allegedly thanks in part to Cornovii intrigue and the rabble-rousing of the young orator Graeme.

Greek nationalists who might otherwise have resisted the Roman invasion were often convinced to join the anti-Communist fight, and the Cornovii found themselves outnumbered past even the ridiculous odds against which Geletian armies had traditionally chosen to do battle. Outnumbered more than three hundred to one against the Romans and Greek collaborators, the Cornovii were also harassed by anti-Communist militias from the Principality, and soon gave up their attempts to hold on in their traditional homeland.

The only place for Celts to go, if they could not reach the Land of Song#, was back to Geletia, and, as is ever the case for Geletians placed in a hopeless situation, the next course of action was to set about engineering an additional problem.

The Revolution

At the start of the 1980s, Geletia was wracked by insurgency, and Llewellyn was putting as much effort into denying its existence as he was into ending it. At the head of the strongest round of political violence in recent years was Sithin-educated Colonel Kezo, who had recently snuck back into the country, bringing the support and encouragement of the Progintern.

When the Cornovii unexpectedly (surely this must be one of Llewellyn's most glaring miscalculations in a forty-year military career that included many successes) turned north and attacked into the Principality, uprooting their entire tribe and leaving Greece for good in one of history's largest migrations, the face of the insurgency changed. Orinoccorix was a brash leader in the best Geletian tradition, somewhat forgotten and even suppressed by the Principality, his warriors were furious at being forced from their homes and desperate to find a new life for their families, and the Chieftain made his cousin, Graeme, his political advisor and, perhaps accidentally, the spokesman for both the Cornovii tribe and the Geletian revolution.

While Colonel Kezo was hunkered-down for a long campaign of bombings and targeted assassinations, the Cornovii began to launch daring and devastating hit and run raids that they identified with the chariot warfare for which their ancestors were famous (or infamous). At Graeme's suggestion, Orinoccorix hit the refineries at Porthmadog (Burgas), where Russian oil was processed for re-export, as Geletia's relevant infrastructure here was generally superior to that of the Empire.

As Russia's oil exports were threatened, the Tsar threatened to intervene, a prospect that galvanised popular opinion against Llewellyn and made the revolution seem a more urgent cause. The Cornovii became Llewellyn's number one enemy, raising the profile of Orinoccorix and Graeme.

Then came the Historic Handshake between Kezo and Orinoccorix and the consequent May Day Offensive of 1982. Though trouble was expected by the Principality, the Cornovii attack on Trevenya, capital of the Tolistobogii tribe from which Llewellyn hailed, was a surprise. As its massive scale became clear, Kezo's Strainist partisans ambushed the royal guard at Porthmadog, where Llewellyn was showing the flag and inspecting damage to the refineries and docks after the recent Cornovii raid.

The civil war had entered its final and most violent phase. Fighting dragged on for almost three weeks, until it was revealed that Llewellyn had fled to Transnistria and Russian protection. Trevenya was occupied by the Cornovii, and the Principality was declared dissolved in a joint statement issued by Colonel Kezo and co-signed by Orinoccorix, Graeme Igo, and seventeen other tribal kings, leaving only the Tolistobogii initially unrepresented in the declaration. They would later indicate their approval after the clan chieftains elected a new tribal king in Llewellyn's place. This would be one of the shortest tribal reigns in history, as the creation of the Republic meant that time was limited for the old structures.

The First Republic

Declared on the 20th of May, 1982, the First Geletian Republic was a multi-party democracy dominated by left-wing factions. The Geletian Communist Party, outlawed under Llewellyn's rule, took the dominant position in the old Royal Parliament at Portmeirion in Akink. Colonel Kezo seized the new post of Presidency and Orinoccorix Magigo replaced one Braeden Apcarr -apparently sacrificed by Kezo in the Historic Handshake deal- as Chairman of the Geletian Communist Party.

Kezo pursued an old-style Strainist command approach to the economy, directing Orinoccorix and the GCP to over-see The First Five Year Plan (summer 1982 to summer 1987) and apparently making low-key visits to the Choson People's Republic to observe the Kurosite reading in action.

Despite this backwards-looking economic policy, Kezo and the GCP remained diplomatically close to the modern Strainist Party, which commentators such as Graeme Igo, from whom Orinoccorix was by now trying to distance himself, decried as blatantly revisionist. Kezo said that a short series of five-year plans was needed to reorganise the feudal economy of Geletia in order to catch-up with the People's Republic of Spyr before modern Market Socialist ideas could normalise economic relations.

The GCP looked to emulate Spyr's rapid Socialist-market development, seen as happening in stages from agriculture and crafts to gradually heavier industry and on to services in an even faster drive. Royal treasures were sold-off, often by semi-criminal means, and huge agricultural plans enacted in hopes of taking advantage of the nation's fertile soils and skilled farming traditions to acquire revenue for the acquisition of industrial capital. Though the economy did initially expand quite quickly, considerable shortfalls induced the Party's accumulation of substantial foreign debt, both to Sithin and western powers such as London and Berlin, in an effort to meet capital growth targets.

Despite some problems, there was widespread popular enthusiasm for the new Republic and the rule of the Communist Party in the early and middle 1980s as Celtic culture was allowed to flourish once again and Russian ballet was replaced on national television by Revolutionary Super Squad and other Spyrian anime and such productions, which ran quite the fad in Geletia for much of the decade, perhaps as Kezo tried to convince the population that they were being lead into a whole new world of positive experiences. By the latter part of the decade, the Party could point to a number of achievements.

Geletia's steel production was to a greater tonnage than that of any single nation in the Roman Empire despite the national population being slightly lower than that of Spain. Unemployment was substantially lower than it had been at the start of the decade. The last several years had been relatively peaceful, and the armed forces had managed to begin replacing the TG-580 and TG-85 battle tanks -based on the T-54/55- with the more powerful TG-125, produced locally using a mix of Russian and Western technologies. Literacy was also far higher in the age group educated over the years since 1982 than in prior years.

However, the export boom of the First Five Year Plan was tapering off as the Second Five Year Plan -scheduled to begin on the first day of 1988 and conclude on the last day of 1992 - got under way. Some people who had applied after 1982 were still waiting for private accommodation or a Dacia-1300 sedan. And the need to pay-off foreign debt while still increasing the rate of industrialisation and the level of output essentially meant that the Second Five Year Plan mandated a major increase in working hours for industrial labourers. There was also a further expansion of the draft, Kezo having sated the need for a million man army to defend Geletia against Tsar and Caesar. It was joked that unemployment was only as low as it was because everyone who was not in university was either in the army or chained to a plough.

In Parliament, the GCP was increasingly split between those mustered behind Orinoccorix in following Kezo's planned road to Market Socialism and a growing minority around Graeme Igo calling for immediate Economic Democracy without any Party vanguardism or central command. All other opposition was essentially muted by being organised along the lines of tribal interest which had little sway in a national arena as the better part of two dozen mostly regional parties advocating for 'Parisii developmental aid' or 'Magyar rights' sapped the membership of other ideologically-based parties such as the Anarchists and the Nationalists and left the Communist Party beyond effective challenge.

The Geletian Spring

[WIP]

Notes-
*Map in many of the tribes of Geletia is equivalent to the Scottish and Irish Gaelic Mac, and is also known in Cornish and in Welsh, where it became Mab and ultimately Ap, and in all cases means son and is a prefix equivalent to Johnson et cetera in English. Thus Llewellyn Map Gelert is Lewellyn, son of Gelert, or, in a sense, Llewellyn Gelertson. Different Geletian tribes have their own variations, though it should be noted that most Geletian languages bear more resemblance to the Brythonic (Welsh, Cornish, Breton) languages than the Goidelic (Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Manx) without being originally closely related to either of these insular -as opposed to Geletia's continental- Celtic tongues.

**The rix suffix identifies the individual as a leader of his people, a great hero, or some other champion or noteworthy (in this case head of the Clan -or extended family- Igo, and later Chieftain -or king- of the Cornovii), and would have been acquired during life. Orinoccorix's birth name remains a matter of great speculation.

#Wales is seen in a strangely romantic light by the majority of Geletians, who imagine a pristine land of green valleys, idly grazing sheep, and honest working labourers who follow a hard day in the mines with beautiful singing or friendly, down-to-earth games of rugby, and resist valiantly the encroachment of English cultural imperialism. When confronted by Geletians, this often leaves Welshmen every bit as bemused as the Ethiopian Emperor on a visit to Jamaica, or else put in mind of Fidel Castro's response in an episode of the popular Quinntonian television show The Simpsons when his nation is referred to as a socialist paradise, "...You're talking about Cuba?"

Defence

Branches: National People's Guard including Beddgelen People's Army, Beddgelen Democratic Republican Navy, Beddgelen Air Force including People's Air Defence Force
Gelert Sentinels (Border Troops)
Combat Groups of the Working Class

Manpower:
Fit for service:
males age 16-49: 7,826,151
females age 16-49: 7,989,244
Active: 350,000
Reserve: 500,000
Border Troops: 80,000
Paramilitary: 400,000
Total enroled: 1,330,000

Expenditure:
Dollar terms: US$50bln
GDP terms: 6.4%

Note: Figures do not include GSIC -Gelert Sentinels Intelligence Co-operative, not to be confused with the Gelert Sentinels Border Troops-, the BDR's secret police, involving paramilitary elements, special operations units, and amongst the world's highest concentrations of citizen-spies, thought to have over 100,000 regular employees; neither included is the People's Police, a large gendarmerie. Both of these forces have near military standard training but lighter equipment.

Tribes and the Former Tetrachy

In the long history of the Geletian Tetrachy, which endured for more than two thousand years until the fateful resolution to join in alliance with the Axis during the Second World War provoked Russian invasion and the eventual rise of the Principality, southeast, central, and northwest Geletia were partially autonomous partners.

The Western Tribes
(Hungary)

The Durcodi

The Durcodi are foremost amongst the Western Tribes and traditionally provided their Chieftain as one third of the Tetrachy. Their historic capital is at Akink (Budapest) on the river Danube.

Famous warriors, proud and described by visitors as a handsome race, the Durcodi count Adiatorix their most famous living son, but today decadence is widely attributed by other Geletians to the once noble Durcodi, and it is perhaps the recognition of this shame that is the best spur to an undercurrent of political radicalism in a land that invented Geletian inequality.

The Trocmi

The Trocmi, a Western Tribes people, are noted as one of few tribes that never fully accepted the legitimacy of the Russian-backed Principality, and their people lead many of the revolts that shook the nation between 1947 and the ultimately triumphant May Revolution of 1982.

Since then, Durcodi influences have seeped into what is described as one of Geletia's hardcore anti-classicalist lands, and, as the plains people of the Trocmi tribe see local and individual power rolling up-hill to their capital, Tavium (Debrecen), in what looks like Party-rule by stealth, radicalism takes root here in both traditionalist and modern communist theory.

The Pitovirii

The Pitovirii are a fascinating people of contrast. One of the three most primitive of Geletian sub-groupings in technological and arguably in cultural terms, they also remain the most independent and free of influence from foreigners or party. Living in a large area west of the Danube, close to the southern frontier, they number amongst the fewest.

These semi-nomadic people, based at Kaposia (Kaposvar), remain opposed on principle to property rights and almost any form of centralisation, and are amongst the Western Tribes grouping.

The Nervii

Upon their Danube island (Csepel), where their capital, Bagacum (Szigetszentmiklós), is situated, the Nervii were able to live in relative peace for much of their history, but have proven themselves capable of great sacrifice, sending many volunteers to various conflicts and placing themselves at the fore in periodic encounters with explotative foreign powers visiting Geletia through the ages.

On their island the Nervii have come to embrace humanitarian and left-socialist ideas on revolution, and are proponents of the Greater Geletia movement to recover both Moldova and the Galatian lands in Asia Minor.

The Central Tribes
(Romania)

The Tolistobogii

With their capital at Pessinus (Galati), these too are a people called hardcore anti-classicalists, and since the loss of some territory to the Russian Empire they have been staunch in their refusal to accept any modern influences, though their participation in the reforms of the BDR has enabled a limited bleed-off of technological progress that makes these ancient Celts with tractors and assault rifles.

The Tolistobogii were traditionally part of the Central Tribes within the Tetrachy, and their Chieftain served on the leadership trio until the rise of Llewellyn. The tribe would go into decline after falling behind technologically, surrendering territory to Russia, leading the pro-Axis movement, and then suffering defeat to Russian and allied forces, enabling the Cornovii, lead by the radical-Communist Clan Igo, to dislodge what perhaps had once been the greatest of Geletian tribes from its largest city, Trevenya.

The Tectosages

A third group described as anti-classicalist in a hardcore manner, the Tectosages have their capital at Tolosa (Tulcea), a hillfort of breathtaking scale and an epic physical imposition upon the landscape.

The Tectosages are reasonably advanced and wealthy in tradition, but it remains to be seen where they shall head in future as their revolutionary course is hard to judge. If anything, conflict with the Russians in what the world knows as Moldova may define the strength of the Tectosages as revolutionaries.

The Durotriges

"The Durotriges", said Adiatorix while on campaign against so-called splittist elements, "are best left alone, so long as there are left also enough enemies for them to fight".

Militant to a totally reckless degree, the Durotriges are known to join battle even in the face of the most ridiculous odds, and to do so often naked and without any obvious thought on the tactical situation. In brief skirmishing against revolutionary Igovian forces, the Durotriges used frontal assaults supported by flanking cavalry and chariots and longbowmen even when facing mechanised forces, machineguns, and artillery, and were effective enough to encourage the all-conquering enemy to by-pass their territory until 1989's February Revolution brought them in from the cold.

Living still in hillforts, the Durotriges seem happy to blend tradition with leftist radicalism as they advance into the modern age practicing direct democracy and drunken blade-wielding.

The Selgovae

The forest Celts. Selgovae are known as hunters, the people always said to be in touch with nature, though they are almost as famous for the natural wealth contained in their territory. Felled by Russian forces only after an especially ferocious war of resistance, the Selgovae revolution today is characterised by an especially authoritarian nature, these people being especially committed to strong leadership.

Selgovae military tradition is of intermediate intensity and repute, boosted by the people's painful and long-lasting opposition to the Tsar and the Prince, and it is the sudden rise of warriors to the fore in their society -a trend encouraged by the applause of Geletians from other lands- that has put an unofficial military junta at the head of the local party apparatus.

Regni

The smallest population in Greater Geletia, the Regni were also primitive in society and technology, and the majority of their number have been absorbed into Moldova. Clan-based rather than a united tribal structure, Regni society lost cohesion after a relatively short period of co-existance with the foreigners and their small population has been absorbed into what the BDR calls colonial life with a moderate degree of success. In the BDR, Regni are now essentially homeless, and in places suffer discrimination along with the Roma minority.

The Cornovii

The Cornovii are known as warriors with a proud cavalry tradition and with a string of commanders skilled at manoeuvre warfare. The Clan Igo is born of this tribe, which migrated from the southern Balkans after the New Roman invasion, and there can be little doubt that the Igos had much to do with Rome's fear of Communist activity in what they now call Byzantium.

Traditionally a Southern Tribes people, the Cornovii now inhabit lands associated with the Central Tribes. Their capital is at the great city of Trevenya (Bucharest), from which they dislodged the Tolistobogii in one of the most violent episodes of recent domestic Geletian history.

The Southern Tribes
(Bulgaria)

The Sygenii

Highlanders made miners by the government and redundant by the market, the Sygenii are perhaps the continent's most avid Igovians, though they embrace amongst them a range of radical theories and are united primarily by a common desire to obliterate the influence of the Russian Empire that, in their view, subjugated them. The Sygenii are a Southern Tribes people, and their capital is at Sygica (Sofia).

The Deceangli

With a mysterious Danube island (Belene), adjacent to their main Southern Tribes territory, that is widely believed to contain forces beyond understanding and with these most religious of Geletians regarded as respectable, the Deceangli were able to live in relative peace. Their capital is at Caerhun (Pleven).

The coming to Geletia of leftist political theory has seriously hurt the privileged position long maintained by these people, but that their druidic tradition did at least delay the spread of new religions (this term applied disparagingly to the likes of Christianity and Islam, which the Geletians at large regard as hysterical flashes in the pan) may be enough to save for their domain a valued position in the revolution.

The Venetii

The Venetii are the best of Geletia's sailors and have defended themselves with a tactical flexibility resulting from this. They have tended to be the most agreeable to foreign contact, and are marginally less traditional in outlook, though the sale of Celtic arts and crafts has at least kept alive many traditional skills. Their capital is as Venice (Burgas), which is the largest port in the south, a major industrial hub, and boasts an airport that serves the tourist resorts of the Beddgelen Black Sea coast.



The Scordisci

The Scordisci people are famous for their ability to adapt not only to different geographic and climactic settings but to political change. They coped reasonably well under the Principality and engaged the freemarket with what has been described as success, but this term hides deep emotional disturbance at seeing a large minority made idle by market forces and discontent at the creation of a criminal element outside of alien laws and beaten with a stick marked rights. They caused little trouble to parliament, but threw themselves ably on the passing wave of revolt without worry for the challenges it presented.

W/C/S?

The Silures

These people, the Silures, make war for sport, clashing time and again with the Durotriges in ancient history, always managing to hold-on to their territory by bracing against the mountains and sinking their fingers into the valleys of home. Despite their love of fighting, the Silures are rarely accused of unusual brutality, and are in fact described usually as a jolly lot, fond of drink and story-telling: some have observed that they go to war only when in need of new tales to be swapped over a bowl of wine and a leg of mutton.

The Silures today have embraced the revolution with enthusiasm, enjoying comraderie in social groups based around the warrior tradition. Their prime struggle is almost post-revolutionary, being between leftists and 'national-revolutionaries' for the future role of the Soviets in society and government.

W/C/S?

The Demetae

Successful farmers fortunate to have few powerful and aggressive neighbours, the Demetae were brought into the Principality by a local military coup that coincided with an invasion by Llewellyn and the Russian for which they were not best prepared.

Their interest in revolution is mainly for national independence, but today they face important decisions over traditionally and politically structured modes of co-operative agricultural management, which they call Communistic while many deride these models as unscientific.

W/C/S?

The Averni

The Averni highlanders are keen revolutionaries of a traditional bent, and violently opposed to westernisation. The term enthusiasm barely does justice to their excitable nature as a people, and many would accuse the Averni of hyperactivity. They will typically spring to the defence of anything perceived as Celtic and attempt to shout-down ideas taken to be alien.

W/C/S?

The Parisii

Parisii misfortune is a standing black-humour joke in Geletia, for these are a people who right themselves from one disaster only in time to be struck by another, in a pattern that repeats throughout history. Frequent earthquakes and unexpected floods frustrate attempts at self-sufficiency and efforts by the capital, Lutetia (?), to plan for development, and hardships such as these discourage visitors and trade. Parisii numbers have never grown very strong, and while those that do endure here are hardy people, they remain assaulted by bad luck and generally ill-health.

Valiant in their attempts to over-throw Llewellyn's authority left the Parisii vulnerable to extreme repression, but the long-suffering people here, famous for chariot burials and sports, remain ever willing to see themselves first as Geletians and Communists, and only second as Parisii.

W/C/S?

Key Personalities

Comrade Graeme Igo

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No longer a young man, Graeme still turns out for public events, no matter the weather

As General Secretary of the Central Committee of the League of Beddgelen Communists, comrade Graeme Igo serves officially as the BDR's Chief of State.

Comrade Chivo

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Chivo pictured at a historic juncture, during the upheavals of the February Revolution

As Chairman of Council of State of the Beddgelen Democratic Republic, comrade Chivo acts as Head of Government in Beddgelert.

Comrade Adiatorix

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Statues of the great warrior Adiatorix may be found across the BDR, and some have bases set with the skulls of his vanquished enemies

Comrade Sopworth Igo

Comrade Vera Igo

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Vera pictured with husband, Graeme

Today, Vera holds the position of Chairwoman of the Cultural Council of the Beddgelen Democratic Republic, making her an influential figure in her own right. She is a principle architect of the state's recent intervention in the religious life of its citizens. Vera Igo is active in the Women's Democratic Federation of Beddgelert as well as the League of Culture of the Beddgelen Democratic Republic with which her Chair is associated.

The Civil Strategy
Entertainment and Revolutionary Society

WIP

Cities of the BDR

Akink
(Budapest)
Population: 1.7 million urban, 2.4 million metro
Area: 525sq.km
Capital of the BDR and of the Durcodi tribe, Akink is held to be one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and its citizens some of the most beautiful people. The city has been called many things, including, "Pearl of the Danube", "Queen of the Danube", "Heart of Europe", and, "Capital of Freedom". The city attracts over twenty million visitors each year, providing Beddgelert with much needed foreign currency. The name Akink is Geletian and means Abundant Water in reference to the mighty Danube upon which the city is built.

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Heroes' Square, Akink

Trevenya
(Bucharest)
Population: 1.9 million urban, 2.6 million metro
Area: 238 sq km
The largest city in Beddgelert and capital of the Cornovii since they dislodged the Tolistobogii as recently as the second half of the C20th. Once called, "Little Paris" and possessed of beauty to rival Akink, the city was damaged in the Second World War, further injured in fighting between the Cornovii and the Tolistobogii, and then suffered far more aesthetic degradation during the Systemisation of the early Communist period. The former Palace of the Tolistobogii, which now serves the headquarters of GSIC, is the largest building in Europe and the second largest on earth.

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GSIC HQ, Trevenya

Sygica
(Sofia)
Population: 1.35 million
Area: 1,349 sq km
Capital of the Sygenii, this sprawling city lies in a valley at the foot of a mountain massif, and has been inhabited for some seven thousand years at least. With a central position in the Balkans, Sygica can be accessed by roads through three mountain passes, making it a strategically significant city.

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Palace of the Sygenii, Sygica

Tavium
(Debrecen)
Population: 200,000
Area: 461 sq km
The capital of the Trocmi, a plains people of the western tribes, Tavium is one of the earliest Geletian cities to have a steam railway, opened in 1884. Today it boasts a well developed tram network and a number of museums, theaters, and sports stadiums.

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Tavium city centre

Kaposia
(Kaposvar)
Population: 68,000
Area: 113 sq km
Capital of the Pitovirii tribe, the semi-nomadic nature of these people has traditionally limited the scope of Kaposia's development. The city has a unique culture as a result of this, of course, and it is well connected by road and rail as well as lying on the banks of the river Kapos.

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Kaposia. Note that the spire of one of Beddgelert's few Churches is answered quite deliberately by the secular clocktower facing its flank from across the road!

Bagacum
(Szigetszentmiklós)
Population: 26,000
Area: 46 sq km
Capital of the Nervii, Bagacum is situated upon the island of Csepel, in the Danube south of Akink, from where the city is accessible via the underground rail network.

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Industrial park in Bagacum

Pessinus
(Galati)
Population: 295,000 urban, 600,000 metro
Area: 246 sq km
Since the retreat from Trevenya, this has been the capital of the Tolistobogii. Pessinus is noted, amongst other things, for its 150 metre tall concrete TV tower, from which the whole city can be observed by visitors. The Sidex state-owned steel plant and the largest shipyards in the nation are located here, prompting many to speculate that the Tolistobogii may be on the road to regaining their past greatness.

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The efficient, systematic form of Pessinus

Tolosa
(Tuclea)
Population: 92,000
Area:
Capital of the Tectosages, this has stood as one of the greatest hillfort communities in the Celtic world, and today evolved to become grudgingly modern in at least some small part, with port facilities on the Danube.

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Tolosa's waterfront, beyond the old hillfort

Lutetia

[WIP]

Religion in the BDR

It is almost a miracle, if one may use that term, that the BDR allowed a Roman delegation to attend the Akink Accords -which probably speaks to the unusual strength of worries about climate change in the Beddgelen political theatre- because Beddgelert is really quite fanatical in its opposition to the Papacy, most citizens having the basically unquestioned view that it is the Big Bad in the world.

Protestantism has actually received a few cheers over the ages, but most Geletians still think that it is rather amusing to see people worshipping gods that take human form. There isn't really a need for the officially atheist BDR to suppress religion, because it has simply never taken root.

Much as Quinntonia is a nation where almost everyone believes, Beddgelert is one where almost nobody does.

There is a history of druidic practices, which has never been a big part of most people's lives and is far less popular today than it was two thousand years ago.

The experience of the Principality and its attempt to establish a Geletian Orthodox Church while stripping the proud Geletian race of its political independence and willful democracy has pretty much put paid to any Christian movement in the near future. Christianity is almost innately associated with shame, deprivation, and other such negatives.

Clashes with Muslim invaders in the past have combined with the age-old struggle against Rome and the recent period of Russian Tsarist influence to create in Beddgelert the popular perception of organised religion as the driving force of foreign imperialism with Geletia as its target.

Both the Catholic and Orthodox churches are explicitly outlawed in the Beddgelen Democratic Republic, being classified as enemy apparatus. Other churches and religions are not legally disallowed, enabling Quinntonian missionaries to work in the BDR, but it is no secret that their efforts are largely in vain. There have been hate attacks against missionary operations, ostensibly by citizens who view the Lutheran missions as like to the Catholic and Orthodox churches in seeking to import the influence of a foreign government, but these are rare and the security forces have tended to take a dim view of such behaviour